Sweden in Focus18 Tammi 2025

Will Sweden's new citizenship rules put foreign workers off?

Sweden's government promised a paradigm shift on immigration and this was a week in which they moved ahead with some cornerstone policies.

As we spoke about in last week's podcast, enhanced security checks are expected to slow down decisions on citizenship by a migration authority already struggling to manage a backlog of more than 80,000 applications.

The head of a government inquiry this week recommended a grace period for existing applicants as Sweden moves to extend residency requirements from five to eight years for citizenship. In this week's episode politicians remind us that they're not obliged to follow the inquiry's recommendations.

For Membership+ subscribers we discuss why dual citizenship is on the agenda this week after a parliamentary committee recommended changing the constitution to enable the revocation of Swedish citizenship for serious crimes including espionage, terrorism and treason. But a disagreement between the government and the Social Democrats on which crimes should be covered suggests this is an issue we'll be hearing much more about in the run-up to the 2026 election.

Host Paul O’Mahony is joined this week by regular panelists Emma Löfgren and James Savage.

Here are links to some of the topics discussed in the episode:

New Swedish citizenship rules

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